A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

Legendary Assassin is the directorial debut of both Wu Jing and Nicky Li. Nicky Li is a former fight choreography and stunt member of the Jackie Chan Stunt Team, who has had collaborated with Wu Jing in several projects like Fatal Contact and Invisible Target. And as debuts go this one is very solid to good.What I like about this film the most that it moves along in a nice pace where not a minute is wasted with redundant sub plots or other distractions. Every event or character interaction is functional. Through the non action scenes we get to know the main character and kind of what makes him tick. I say kind of since not much background is given on Bo Tong Lam (Wu Jing). But he is not your typical good guy as he is capable of cold blooded murder if the title didn't gave away this already. After assassinating a big crime boss (who was hiding out on a small island) he is forced to stay on the island since there are no ferries coming in because of a typhoon alert. It is this moment where he makes a connection with Hiu Wor (Celina Jade who you might recognize from Arrow where she played Shado). He gets to spend some nice moments with her and her colleagues and this was very pleasant to see because they make you care about the characters despite them just having met.And since you care it does intensify the action. It's such a simple device to do this and yet many similar films fail to do this. So I am glad that Wu Jing understood this. Now he does make some mistakes by making the film a little too serious and dramatic but I guess that you can't escape from tragedy in Asian films. But first and foremost it's done in service of the action and that is a good thing. It makes you involved and will make the action have more impact. The action on it's own is what you can expect from Wu Jing or Jacky Wu and is hard hitting and stylish. Sometimes wireworks are used but very sparingly.Overall this film delivers on the action and makes me want Wu Jing to do more projects. Wolf Warrior was excellent, let's hope the sequel to that will be too.

Good looking but otherwise not very good action film about Bo (Jacky Wu aka Wu Jing) who goes to an island near Hong Kong and kills a mob boss and removes his head. Since a typhoon is rapidly approaching he finds himself stranded on the island. While looking for a place to eat he runs in a women played by Celina Jade, who takes him in after he rescues her cat. things become complicated when she turns out to be a cop, the dead mob boss is discovered by more mobsters who have come to the island and he ends up waiting out the storm in the police station as a witness to another crime.Fast moving action film suffers because other than the final battle in the rain the action sequences are unremarkable (and full of obvious, not very well done, wire work). The numerous fights kind of come off as almost rehearsals thanks to poor camera shots which reveal how little contact was made. Celina Jade isn't really believable as the cop who's capable of holding her own against the bad guys since from her first action scene we're asked to believe she had to be rescued from the clutches (literally) of a bad guy she will moments later fight to a stand still. The film tries to have it both ways and ends up having it no way.I won't pick on her performance since its clear she had problems that didn't really allow her to do more than look pretty.Not a horrible film, its just one that needs to be reedited to make it seem more real.Give the film points in that I made it to the end, and maybe one more knowing that if I ran across it on cable I might actually watch it again. Its a film that belongs in that weird twilight zone of not really good that you'd choose to watch it again, but would if you ran across it, even though its not really good that you'd recommend it or admit you saw it, since its not that bad, but the same time its not really good either, but its not bad enough to dismiss as total trash that you can really make fun of.somewhere around 5 out of 10, maybe 4 out of 10 or...

Being a big fan of Wu Jing, I've waited nearly a year for Legendary Assassin after his dazzling moves in Fatal Move left me in limbo. I'm not sure how big a role he played as co-director in this film, but the direction and the story was fairly mediocre. It takes place on an island where he meets the girl cop (Celina Jade), and gets chased around by the bad guys. They are trapped on the island because a tropical typhoon has shut down all the ferries. It feels a bit like Assault on Precinct 13 but nowhere near as intense or exciting. A 6 to 6.5 rating is about right.The thing about Jacky is that he always seems to fall short of making that 'big break' movie that truly shows how great an actor he can be. In Legendary Assassin, his acting is pretty much exactly the same as in Fatal Contact, whenever someone talks to him he smiles and waits a few seconds before replying. He plays the underdog secret assassin/kungfu master alternate identity that is in danger of being typecast nowadays. The big difference is that he talks a lot less than in Fatal Contact, and therefore in my opinion it is a step back. He actually took a step back from Fatal Contact. There should have been much more dialogue between him and Celina. The fighting scenes were slightly above average, nothing spectacular. A lot of people knock Fatal Move, but I thought it was intended to be over the top and ridiculous, like something out of a Japanese comic, CGI blood spraying all over the place. His fighting scenes were much better in Fatal Move and SPL. I guess I'm a bit spoiled by Donnie Yen, at the moment if Jet Li is considered to be retired, then Donnie reigns supreme (both on the screen and as producer/director) and Jacky is just behind him. In a leading role, Fatal Contact is probably still Jacky's finest, so he needs to step back and evaluate which direction his career should be headed. Perhaps he should take on projects with a solid script and director. I'm a huge fan of Jacky Wu and hope his next project can truly take it to the next level, and break more barriers.A pleasant surprise is Hong Kong born newcomer Celina Jade making her debut, who is half Chinese and half American. Besides her natural beauty, she can also speak three languages (English, Cantonese, Mandarin). Perhaps because of the fact that she was actually born and raised in Hong Kong, she performed admirably in Legendary Assassin and looked very natural on the screen, never fazed or looking out of place alongside a solid cast with some old time faces. Besides those dreamy eyes, her language and culture is her greatest asset, as despite playing a naive cop, you take her seriously as she delivered her lines with sincerity and realism rather than just being silly or trying to look cute. She also displayed a wide variety of emotions convincingly, and is definitely one to look out for in future Hong Kong productions.

The good thing about this movie is that it does not pretend to be an "Infernal Affair" with convoluted plots or an artsy study of human nature. With a simple revenge story, ample first-rate action and competent acting, it offers what movies are usually expected to offer – good entertainment.The stage is a moderately populated island temporarily cut off from the outside world by a storm. The scene: a cosy little local police station, a mysterious stranger (a loner who fights like the devil), a murder involving a body without the head, confrontation between the cobs and goons that outnumber them – all adding up to good dramatic moments.Since Jet Li, Jacky Wu is the best thing from the academies of martial arts of China. The adept camera work and editing fits in well with his crisp, superb action. There is one sequence in the finale that is reminiscent of the one-against-a-hundred scene in Matrix. Fresh face (for the cinema at least) Eurasian Celina Jade has everything it takes to make it to the top in Hong Kong, and maybe even go Hollywood-bound like Maggie Q. It's a question of whether she gets the necessary breaks. "Legendary assassin" also has a supporting cast of over half a dozen Hong Kong favourites from contemporary pop heartthrob Alex Fong to early generation women action star WAI Ying-hung – guaranteed to please the local audience.